Enviros give Obama a pass on spill

Last week, it seemed, environmentalists were finally ready to let loose on President Barack Obama over the Gulf oil spill.

Actress Q’orianka Kilcher chained herself to the White House fence while her mother slathered the “Pocahontas” star in black paint meant to look like oozing crude.

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Kilcher’s cause? Not the Gulf spill at all but oil-related abuses of indigenous people in Peru, whose president was visiting Obama that day.

As the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history has played out on Obama’s watch, the environmental movement has essentially given him a pass — all but refusing to unleash any vocal criticism against the president even as the public has grown more frustrated by Obama’s performance.

About a dozen environmental groups took out a full page ad in the Washington Post Tuesday — not to fault Obama over the ecological catastrophe but to thank him for putting on hold an Alaska drilling project. “We deeply appreciate your decision. ...” the ad says to Obama.

President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told the Bangor Daily News last week. “He obviously did not take the crisis in the Minerals Management Service adequately seriously, that’s clear. But his agencies have done a phenomenally good job.

Some say there’s little doubt that if a spill like the one in the Gulf took place on former President George W. Bush’s watch, environmental groups would have unleashed an unsparing fury on the Republican in the White House. For their liberal ally, Obama, they seem willing to hold their tongues.

These guys have bet the farm on this administration,” said Ted Nordhaus, chairman of an environmental think tank, the Breakthrough Institute. “There has been a real hesitancy to criticize this administration out of a sense that they’re kind of the only game in town. … These guys are so beholden to this administration to move their agenda that I think they’re unwilling to criticize them.

The most prominent voices of outrage have come not from mainstream environmental groups, but from the likes of political consultant James Carville, comedian Bill Maher and Plaquemines, La., Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Carville’s call for Obama to hold BP’s feet to the fire has penetrated the national consciousness in a way that comments from traditional environmental groups have not.

'Who’s your daddy?’ has become the talking point of the crisis so far,” observed Matt Nisbet, a professor of environmental communications at American University, referring to a comment by Carville. “It’s difficult for the national environmental groups to be critics of the administration — they’re working so closely with the administration. ... They have reacted cautiously and softly."